Watch The Hands - An R. M. Danelev, Esq., Story by M. K. Dreysen

It's been a while since we checked in on R. M. Danelev and company. I wonder what they've been up to... Ah.

Dear reader, for this week's free story, Randi and company seem to have taken themselves to a winter break at Disneyland. I wonder what could have persuaded them to hie off for the West Coast?

Watch The Hands - An R. M. Danelev, Esq., Story by M. K. Dreysen

"Ah, Randi," Jack Tanglewilde said. "It's so unfortunate you've stepped outside your comfort zone like this."

Randi had spent three days an uncomfortable guest of Jack's team. She wasn't in the mood for banter.

That said, there were, unfortunately, parts to be played. "Since when are you so territorial, Jack?"

The older man, a self-contained, well-dressed, on the way to somewhere important type, shrugged. "Call it the side effect of age, Randi. I'm not interested in traveling, these days. So I'm in the position of needing to defend a certain amount of real estate. For my own best interests, of course."

They sat in a conference room; a small one, the oval table just big enough for four, six if they wanted to rub elbows. Randi had her end, Jack the other.

The main difference between the two being that Jack had Randi's phone and laptop arrayed before him. "You've been busy, Randi. Richard's been kind enough to show me your 'vacation' photos. And notes. Perhaps you'd like to share a little more information?"

The phone and laptop told a story of a job in the planning. She'd chosen the hotel because it stood across the street from the bank. The country club and the golf course that the high-end hotel shared space with helped.

Long walks with a good camera, and a little bit of that sunny Southern California weather. She'd had worse winter breaks. "You know better than that, Jack. I don't ask my clients for too much information. Not when the checks clear."

Jack chuckled. "A convenient enough excuse, Randi. A bank doesn't really fit that story, though. It looks a great deal like you've finally started branching out on your own. You'll forgive the pun, of course."

In other words, Jack didn't buy the idea that someone had hired her, and the team, to knock off a bank. It was too... pedestrian. Commercial, if you will.

Randi wanted to smile. Not at the pun. At the way her team's reputation proceeded. After all, the money was only half the pleasure. "I'd be guessing, you understand..."

"Please do," he countered. "I always appreciate a good hypothesis."

"There were two conditions on the job. That it occur on a specific date." She stopped.

Jack nodded. "A distraction, then? Go on."

She'd have said that the rest of the confession was a result of three days in a room by herself. Not a bad room, as these things go, really it was a poor man's copy of the generic hotel suite. Bathroom, bed, t.v., a tray of mediocre food for breakfast and dinner. "And that we replace the FBI tracking devices with alternate versions. Supplied by the client."

"Ah, now that's interesting, that is," Jack said. He pushed his chair back from the table, slid his hands behind his head, and relaxed. Or, at least, appeared to. "Which implies..."

"A rental car, left at the Farmer's Market garage, bags in the trunk." She shrugged. "That's all I know, Jack."

He stared at the ceiling now. "What was the date?"

"Unsupplied, as yet, except that we had at least six months to plan and coordinate. They're supposed to provide a date and time along with the devices."

Jack shook his head; then, he sat up and rolled his way back to the table. "You'll forgive me if I don't return your phone and computer. You've put some work into the job, and I'd hate for it all to go to waste." He shut the laptop, slid it and the phone into the case they'd come along in. "You'll provide me with the contact information I need, of course?"

Or, she assumed, she'd find out how deep is the Pacific. She sighed. "Yeah, I'll give you the email address. What's the catch, Jack?"

"Keep quiet for a while, Randi. No jobs. Let's all pretend you're still working this one. And you'll walk away clean."

"Can I at least go to Disney? I've already got the tickets."

He chuckled. "Sure, why not? Take a spin on the Teacups for me, won't you? They'll always be my favorite."

Randi didn't ask him if he intended to fulfill the contract terms. That was understood. Jack was going to burn bridges for her. The information the tracking devices and the date certain would provide were for Jack and his team to benefit from in other ways.

"Such a shame," Yala told her.

Randi had her day at the park; she'd taken a seat at a table on Main Street, for a hot dog and fries and a warm cup of hot chocolate. Every table having some occupant or another, Yala sitting down at one of the empty seats was quite natural. Randi gave her the thumbnail sketch of the past three days.

And Jack's conditions. "All things considered, it could have been worse, Yala."

"Granted. But does a life's reputation go so easily?"

Randi had more thoughts on that question than she knew what to do with. Twelve hours of free time since Jack's crew pulled the blindfold from her face, in front of the Sheraton a few blocks away... She'd put her feet up in that hotel room and tried as best she could to ignore the train of second guesses.

It hadn't really worked. "I'm wondering if Father Wayne wasn't right."

"How's that?" Yala replied.

"Some things we just have to take on faith, Yala." Randi ditched the remains of lunch, then dug out the park map folded into her pocket. The park's phone app might have advantages. Too bad the burner phone she'd picked up that morning didn't have the grunt to go along with it. "The sail boat, you said?"

"She's on the evening shift, you've got a couple hours. They're pulling it into the maintenance dock first thing."

"See you in a few, then."

As with the rest of the trip, Randi's Disney run was part of a working vacation.

The map of L.A. and surrounds, and that Manhattan Beach was only a couple miles from the water, had put the idea in her mind. Dave had been the one with an old friend. "Ginnie's good people. Sami knows her, she helped us put together that equipment package for the Heights job, remember?"

Fourteen ultra high-end gaming rigs, network gear, VR wear, and the tools that went along with the modifications they'd added to the BioHack tournament's sanctioned equipment. The hardest part hadn't been the equipment, or getting it into the tournament unnoticed. Nope, the hard part of that job had been ignoring the incredulous looks from the teenagers competing in the tournament.

"Grandma" had been Randi's handle; that she could have feasibly been the grandmother of some of the kids vying for the BioHack money only made the moniker worse. "We'll just pretend she worked on something else for you, Dave. You don't have to go and mention the specifics, you know?"

Ginnie ran the pirate's sail boat through the Disneyland lagoon. "It ain't much of a boat, when you get down to it."

Other worlds, jobs, that would have been when Randi asked something like, "Why not a fishing boat, or a pilot's gig?"

Their world, they all had a similar reason for the day job with a flexible schedule: camouflage that didn't care much if you occasionally took a week or month off. Same reason Randi's jobs were always timed for winter and summer breaks.

"How much work would it take to get that landing craft Sami found down here?" New build of an old design, updated for the modern era. Sami had found the slightly used landing craft, a perfect price and the owner was willing to do a cash deal, even handle the paperwork.

Only problem was the boat and owner were almost to the Oregon border. Eight plus hours of driving, at least.

"Rent the truck, pay for the airfare, it's not a big deal. Only question is timing."

Randi liked Ginnie's attitude. "How much warning do you need?"

"Couple days should do it. If it's like you said?"

A day to fly up. A day to drive down. Put the boat in the water, and wait outside the surf line for a couple wayward souls in need of a ride. "Yeah, three days for the job, a fourth day for you to do whatever suits you with the boat."

Though, technically, the boat wouldn't be involved in anything obviously criminal, Ginnie wasn't interested in keeping any loose threads tied to her own hands. "Right. You said you didn't care what I did with it..."

"So long as the boat's never going to appear in anyone's list. And we know when you're happy with the what and the how."

Ginnie extended a hand. "You, me, we think the same way, Randi. It's a pleasure to work with a pro. Just tell me when."

Randi took the hand, but remained seated while Ginnie made her way back to the pirate's boat. Yala took the empty spot on the park bench, a large cup of coffee steaming in her hands.

"I'm jealous. Where's the Starbucks?"

"Main Street. Isn't this some shit? What happened to the California weather I was promised?"

The sun and the mild temperatures having fled somewhere to hide. Their day at the park had started out cold, cloudy, and now the wind had come on enough to turn the idea of buying an overpriced sweatshirt from a dream to a life's goal.

"It went well, Yala. Unless you're hiding a masochistic urge somewhere..."

"I left it in my other pants."

"Then I for one am headed back to my nice warm hotel room. Catch up to you in a few days."

The hardest part of the next two days was the pretending she didn't know she was being followed. Jack's team was good, almost as good as her own, Randi admitted.

But Jack's team had allowed themselves to be lulled by access to her phone records. They knew which flight she took that evening, back to Houston. They booked their own seats, last minute, on the same flight.

And, Randi was happy to note, the same pair who accompanied her on the nonstop back to Hobby were the same pair that had spent the day trailing her in Disney.

"They took the first LAX flight this morning," Marlan told her.

They had plenty of time to discuss it, in the cab of the box truck filled with the team's gear. Twenty-six hours of driving leaves plenty of time for discussion.

"Jack had more than enough time to send someone ahead of them," Randi pointed out.

"There's an awful lot of highway between here and L.A., Randi. If they had anyone staged, we'll spot them soon enough."

The two of them went through it all. Sami, Dave, and Yala were holed up in a rented house in Newport Beach. Squeaks was out on Catalina. Yala and Dave had the uniforms and the security car ready to go; Sami was communications lead for this job.

"I took the bigger truck so that they'd have plenty of room for the drive back," Marlan said. "We don't have all that much gear for this one."

A few computers, radios, a couple of wi-fi rigs. The speakers and the lasers, the equalizer board and the fog machines were there for the cover story.

Or, for anything that might come up. Which, such things have a way of doing. The special phone, the one Marlan handed to her as soon as she'd climbed up to the passenger seat, chose that moment to ding, and let them know that such things really were on offer. "It's Jack, letting the 'client' know he, we, are ready to do the job."

"You have the manifests, right?"

"Yep." A handy list of high-dollar, low-profile cargoes coming in to LAX over the next six months. Rough-cut diamonds, specialty motherboards for specialty applications; a custom, solar-powered ultralight with very specific cargo handling capabilities. "Our old clients were happy to provide a little information."

And all of them, even though their particulars wouldn't necessarily stick out when Jack's team started digging, with insurance values more than high enough to send little bells chiming in the heads of those who know. The little bells of greed. "Which one, do you think?"

Which one looked like the kind of cargo worth hijacking? "Diamonds are a girl's best friend, seems like I've heard that a time or two."

"A cliche, don't you think?"

"Keep it simple, Randi. The way those manifests are written, Jack will have to dig around to find out why the insurance value is so high on such a small volume case. Once he's done that kind of work, he's halfway there already."

"The story does kind of write itself, doesn't it? Ok, and that's April twenty-third, ten a.m., coming in on the Lufthansa flight."

"Don't forget the tracking devices."

"Right, thank you, 'we' will send him the tracking devices the day before, so his team won't have time to mess with them. Ok, email sent, done."

They waited patiently for the sent folder to show that the email had gone through. And then, they waited some more, for Jack to reply back with "Roger, accepted."

Randi let the road spool out; they were two hours out of Kerrville, the last stop before the longest stretch of flat and boring on I-10. Marlan listened to Marvin Gaye preach it, Sam Cooke twist it, and Julio Yglesias croon it before Randi came back from wherever she'd gone to chase second thoughts.

The click of the buttons on her phone, then the ding when her text went through, the one that told the team "We're go." These little sounds told him she'd come back to the moment, and that they were all set to shift to the next gear. "Think that place in El Paso is still open?"

Little hole-in-the-wall joint, just outside the Lockheed-Martin offices. Marlan and Randi had spent most of a month in El Paso, once; they'd been forced to remind themselves not to dive into Reynaldo's enchiladas and tamales every day of the week. This had been no easy task, but the job security necessary had won out. Grudgingly.

"They were never open for dinner, Marlan, remember?"

"Shit." They'd pull into El Paso by ten p.m., if the winds held and they didn't hit ice on the climb. Seven hours of sleep, and then back to the drone of the diesel. "Breakfast, then."

"Deal."

The weather cooperated, and the Motel 6. Reynaldo's place, not so much. "He shut it down a couple months back," the hotel clerk informed them.

Marlan had braced her about it as soon as they checked in. "So my stomach knows it can look forward to something more substantial than Jack in the Box for breakfast."

"If I'd known you were going to spend the past few hours torturing me with Reynaldo's cooking, I'd have brought headphones," Randi said to Marlan. "Ok, then there's someplace else where we can get a breakfast almost as good, right?" she asked the desk clerk.

"Sure," and she'd given them a name, a little bit higher end joint, open bright and early for huevos and chorizo and salsa and right off the feeder road, so they didn't have to dare the streets with the box truck.

"Satisfied?" Randi asked, once they'd both finished way too much of the enormous breakfast plates set before them.

"It'll do," Marlan answered. And then they were back on the road.

Halfway between Tucson and Phoenix, just more than halfway to sunset, Sami sent them a text. "Looks like the other team's starting their run."

"Details?" Randi texted back.

"Dave says they're set up with a maintenance truck. They're here to work on the bank building's generator."

The one Randi had written into her laptop, the one Jack 'borrowed', as sitting conveniently in the middle of the bank's parking lot. Brick wall around three-quarters of it, a chain link fence with embedded tarp for access. Measures enough, she'd written, to maybe scare off the casual teenager.

But not enough to worry a pro. Or even slow one down, as Jack's team appeared to be ready to demonstrate.

"Next thing, you'll tell me they have a chopper."

"Umm, well, about that..."

One of the other little details Randi had noted: that the bank's parking lot had plenty of room for a small helicopter to land. If anyone thought that might be necessary for any particular reason.

"A two-seater has been by a couple times this morning. Two rotations each time, and then off to wherever."

Randi chuckled. "I wonder if Jack's stopped to think this through."

"You wrote it up just like we were doing it, Randi."

"I know that. You know that. But put the shoe on the other foot? Would we trust a plan that dropped into our laps like that?"

"Oh, hell no. We'd have dropped it like a hot rock."

The rest of the drive was quiet; except for the drop onto the 110, when the curves and the traffic and the construction took over every bit of Randi's attention, they both of them worried about what could go wrong.

They pulled into the warehouse in San Pedro just before midnight. "Traffic sucked?" Sami asked.

Randi shrugged away the driving stress as best she could. "L.A. story, same as always. Where are Dave and Yala?"

"Pizza and beer run."

"Thank God," Marlan said. "But before we get to the sustenance of the soul, where's the pisser?"

Needs must; Marlan, then Randi, finished their rotation through the restrooms, and then the team sat down to the occasion.

The job discussion came only after they'd each finished a beer; or, in Yala's case, a Mountain Dew. Before that, they ragged each other about minor things. This was the ritual. Sami had drawn the short straw this time; her oldest kid was almost ready for her license.

"She's finished with the classes, ya'll, she passed the test at the driving school, all she's gotta do is go down to DPS and hand in the paperwork." Sami shook her head. "I can't figure it out, I couldn't wait to drive. Lessa couldn't care less."

"At least the dates haven't started," Dave countered. "Ward's had so many girls over this fall, I've lost count. His mother wouldn't care, except the last couple have dietary restrictions. We don't know whether we can't order pizza, Chinese, or what on any given Friday."

Marlan and Yala commiserated; each of their own broods were off to college at this point, but the hazards of the teenager set weren't so far in the rearview they couldn't appreciate the funny business of it all.

Randi sympathized; and, she thanked herself, quietly, for having gone a different route.

The job part of dinner, once they got to it, had its details. But what it all boiled down to was, when? "When are they going for it?" Randi asked for the whole team.

The look passed around the table, Dave, Yala, Marlan, Sami, then back to Randi. "Tomorrow, if they're really using your plan, Randi. The maintenance truck could show up a few times without causing any notice."

"Had to wait for a part," Yala supplied. "Did what we could, part came in yesterday, a few more hours and we are out of your hair, mister."

Marlan nodded. "But the helicopter's another story."

Dave chimed in now. "Hey Jo, is that the same chopper we saw yesterday?"

"Yeah, it looks like it, Bob," Sami answered. "Maybe we should call LAPD."

"Or the FAA," Dave said. "Ask them what's going on."

"Probably just someone scouting a movie location," Sami continued. "It's Los Angeles. But just in case..."

Randi had worked the bank as her team's job. So far as all the notes on the laptop were concerned. She'd paused before putting the note in, the one that read "A chopper might be useful; low profile though, too much time in the area and people will talk." She'd worried that kind of note might feel too much like an elbow jab.

Or stage directions. "Either way, whenever they pull it, we're all on the clock now. Are you two satisfied that Marlan and I can hide in plain sight?"

In the truck in the hotel parking lot, across from the country club and ready to go when they were signaled.

Yala and Dave nodded. "You're good," Yala answered. "So long as you come in before the LAPD arrive."

"We'll wave you around to the freight doors, and from there we're golden."

"Just another part of the daily traffic."

The daily traffic being the food and service deliveries, for the big luxury hotel, and the country club. The two building complexes separated by only a driveway. Marlan and Randi pulled into the hotel's postage stamp of a parking lot the next morning.

Yala and Dave came on shift at six a.m., as security guards the country club had added for their event.

The Member's art collection exhibit, an annual blowout. It ran through the end of January. A chance for the club members to throw a little gate money to a charity. And to enjoy some bragging rights between collectors.

And, for the past few years running, Le Grand Mazarin, diamond of kings, had retained pride of place in the show.

"Think they'll finally admit who owns it?" Marlan asked.

The diamond itself held the virtual ribbon; whoever owned it still refused public bragging rights, even in the country club. Randi shook her head in response to Marlan's question. "The club will take the hit. It's part of what they get paid for."

The two of them watched the generator crew work across the street. Jack's team were 'testing' the generator, in the hour before the bank opened. When doing so wouldn't disrupt business hours.

And, before the bank manager showed up to ask why the generator crew had people inside the vault.

Marlan started the truck when the lights across the way flickered.

"Huh," Randi grunted.

"What?" Marlan asked. In between squeezes of the steering wheel, hard enough he worried he'd break it.

"I didn't think the parking lot lights would be part of the circuit, that's all."

Marlan pulled the truck out of the hotel parking lot, and into the country club driveway, where they saw the helicopter lights winking overhead. Before the rotor sounds came in, as Dave waved them around to the freight door, Randi sent the text. "Call it in."

Sami did so. "Yes, there's a bank robbery in progress in Manhattan Beach."

"LAPD, FBI are responding," she texted to the team. "Get ready."

The chopper was touching down in the parking lot. Not that Randi and Marlan had time to watch it now. They were busy unloading the laser and fog show. "I figured you'd want the insurance," Marlan told Randi as they set the machines next to the Mazarin's secured glass case.

"The LAPD is distracted at the moment, let's not burden them with this. They don't need the aggro really."

The fog and the lasers did the job; they allowed the diamond's alarm system to believe it was still untripped long enough for Randi to slip the pink beauty out and into a waterproof aluminum case. The case was just about the size of a wedding ring box.

Randi placed a carefully manufactured, but quite ordinary, rock in the Mazarin's place. "Here's hoping we had the weight correct."

"Or, at least, that nobody notices until we're long gone. Let's beat feet."

Across the street, Jack's team were loading vault bags into the helicopter. When Marlan pulled the truck around to the front, off in the distance, flashing lights indicated that LAPD's finest were about to make their appearance.

"Wait for it, or go now?" Marlan asked.

"Go. Take the gift when it's on offer." This part of the plan, they'd assumed the cops would have already arrived, and they'd have to sit and wait for traffic control to intervene. Since L.A. traffic hadn't yet taken a hand in things, all Marlan needed to do was to pull out onto the suburban street and drive, carefully, away.

Randi ducked down onto the floor of the passenger side. "Just in case. Jack's distracted, but if he ever has cause to review security footage, let's make sure he doesn't have the faintest hint I've been here."

"Right. Send the text, won't you?"

"We're clear," she sent out.

"Right behind you," Dave responded. Yala was driving, the car with the security company's logo staying a nice easy distance behind the box truck.

"You should be clear," Sami said. "LAPD is pulling in now."

The on-site team members heard the sirens and watched the lights and cars roar in.

Safely behind their team and the getaway. "Chopper's taking off," Dave texted.

The rest of it went quietly. Marlan pulled up at the end of the pier. He and Randi jumped down from the truck, Dave climbed in to take over. Ginnie waited for them both, the landing craft ramp resting on the sand.

Randi stopped, patted her pocket, first thing, where the Mazarin rested. Then, she surveyed the truck, the car, and the boat. "Got it all under control?" she asked Dave.

"We're good."

Yala pulled the magnetized security logo signs from the car doors, then handed them over to Randi. "Long drive ahead."

They'd sell the car for cash; the buyer was scheduled to meet them in Palm Springs in a few hours.

"Take care," Randi said. Then she and Marlan climbed aboard the boat. Ginnie eased the landing craft out past the surf line. When the ride calmed down, Randi texted Squeaks.

"You all set?"

"Yep. See you in a couple hours."

Time enough for Jack to escape in his helicopter, leaving his team members to the mercies of the FBI. For Yala and Dave to sell the car and start arguing over whose turn it was to drive the box truck with all the equipment. For Squeaks to reassure the nervous cutout their client had arranged with "They're on the way", but only half a dozen times or so.

For Randi to text Sami, and she reassured herself it was only following up, doublechecking, NOT being a pain the ass worry wart: "Any indication the alarms went off?"

The club alarms, whether the technological kind, or the meatspace kind when the club employees finally looked inside the case.

"Nothing yet," Sami replied each time Randi sent the question.

And, finally, time enough for all of the team members to peel off the facial prosthetics they'd worn for the job. "At least we only needed them for one day," Marlan pointed out.

Yala and Dave had had to wear the silicon masks every day since January 1st, when the display had opened.

Marlan and Randi threw their face masks into the ocean, along with the security company signs. Yala and Dave both wanted to stuff their masks into the first garbage can they passed, but that was out. Too many finger prints, and DNA, until they could set up a proper disposal method the masks went into a trash bag they kept between the seats of the truck.

Randi waved goodbye, to the masks, and to the L.A. lights receding in the distance. "There goes our brush with Hollywood."

"Think Jack will ever know we're involved?" Marlan asked.

Randi snorted. Eventually, Jack would read about the Mazarin's theft. There was no way they were getting away without him knowing about it. And realizing just how well he'd been snookered.

Still. That didn't answer the other question. "You don't pull a job that depends on someone else's plan unless you're desperate. Why would he hang his people out to dry like that?"

"Greed. What's the rule?"

"If a million's good, ten million's better. Yeah. And you walk if you ever see any hint that I'm starting to think that way."

"Damned straight."

Randi finished the boat ride, half focused on the horizon to keep the sea sickness at bay. The other half, wondering how she'd know where the line was, the one she needed to see half a dozen steps before she went and did something stupid.